Fireball over the West — a Chinese rocket stage re-entering
At about 9:36 p.m. on July 27, 2016, a slow procession of bright fragments with long trails crossed the sky over California, Nevada and Utah, seen from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Salt Lake City and filmed by many people. It moved far more slowly than a meteor. Within hours the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg confirmed that it had tracked the re-entry of the spent second stage of China’s new Long March 7 rocket, launched a month earlier, and later removed the object from the satellite catalogue as decayed. The astronomer Jonathan McDowell identified the stage from the tracking data. Like the Zond IV fragments of 1968, it is the kind of event that turns into a “formation of craft” in some witnesses’ descriptions.
Explanation
The Joint Space Operations Center confirmed that the objects were the second stage of China’s Long March 7 rocket, launched on its first flight on June 25, 2016, re-entering the atmosphere and breaking up.
What was seen
Shape: A slow procession of bright fragments with glowing trails
Witnesses: Thousands of people in California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Colorado
Duration: More than 30 seconds in view from most places
Sources
- Vandenberg Air Force Base — Joint Space Operations Center tracks re-entry over California
- EarthSky — Spectacular rocket re-entry over U.S. West
Browse
- United States
- 2010s
- Identified
- Tracked object events
- Official government documents
- Many independent witnesses
- Video footage
- Lights and fireballs